Dark Tides Read online

  “And if you wanted to send something from the warehouse to the City?” she said. “Some big, bulky things? Would you send them by boat or by wagon?”

  He guessed she was speaking of her antique objects. “I think they would have to go to the Custom House near Queenhithe,” he said. “To pay duties.”

  “I have to pay duties before they are sold?” she asked. “I pay duties on the value of them before I sell them? They think I can afford to pay duties before I have made any money?”

  “I don’t know.” He felt very tired. “It’s not something I’ve ever gone into.”

  As if she sensed his mood, she glanced up at him and smiled. “Ah, business!” she said with a wave of her gloved hand. “We will not talk about business. It is beneath us.”

  They had reached the fallen tree where she had sat before. Again, he spread a fresh silk handkerchief and she perched on the trunk of the tree while he stood before her, and the nursemaid put a shawl on the grass and laid the baby down, bending over to see his smile. She gave him a leaf and took it from him when he put it in his mouth. She showed him a twig. She tickled his round cheeks with a buttercup, smiling at his rich chuckle.

  Livia held her parasol over her head and peeped up at Sir James. “I have found out about your child,” she said. “As I promised I would.”

  Now that he was about to know, he found that he almost wanted to be left in ignorance. “Tell me,” he forced himself to say.

  “They trusted me with the truth, so that I might tell you.”

  “Yes,” he said. “And?”

  “You know that Mrs. Reekie was carrying your child before the accident?”

  The drop of his head told her that he had known this, and that still he had failed to save her.

  “After the accident she nearly died.”

  “The child? What happened to the child?” he whispered.

  “She miscarried the baby. It died. There is no child. You have no son.”

  He gave a little stagger, as if a blow had finally fallen. “You are sure? There is no doubt? No… deceit?”

  “I am sure. They would not lie on a matter so sacred.”

  “But Johnnie? I was so sure he…”

  “He is Alys’s boy. Sarah is hers too. Alys was carrying twins when she left her husband.” She paused. “I don’t know about him,” she said. “I’ll ask if you want.”

  “No, it doesn’t matter. It was their wedding day. I’m not interested in him.”

  She was shocked. “Their wedding day? Heavens! What happened?”

  “It was their wedding day—the day it… all happened.”

  “A winter wedding?” she asked, thinking of the ribbon and the dried berries in Alys’s cupboard. “How sad. Very sad and tragic.”

  “Are you sure of this?” he asked her. “It is not a lie they have made up together?”

  “Why would they lie about something like this, against their own interests? They would be far more likely to say Johnnie is your child and claim your fortune!”

  He tried to speak; he turned away. “So I have no son,” he said, almost to himself. “All these years when I have been hoping… and I sent money. But there was no child. There never was.”

  She gave him a moment to walk up and down, he went past Matteo, who crowed to see him and waved a blade of grass; but James was blind to everything. He came back to stand before Livia. “Forgive me,” he said. “It’s a blow.”

  “But you are free perhaps now? From your sorrow?” She lifted her parasol so he could see her encouraging smile. “You are free to make a new life again.”

  “I would not blame her if she had given the child away, or hidden him from me,” he spoke half to himself. “I wouldn’t blame her if she had found a family to take him and he had been adopted. I would forgive her even if I could never see him.”

  “Yes, but she did not.” Livia had to nip her plump lower lip to contain her irritation. “She told me. Alys heard her tell me. Just as I said. He died, and she buried him.”

  “I can see his grave?”

  “At sea,” she said quietly. “They would not have received him in the churchyard. A miscarried bastard.”

  That silenced him. He bowed his head. “God forgive me.”

  “I swear this, on the life of my own son,” she said earnestly. “You have no child. He died. You are free.”

  He took a little step away from the beautiful young woman seated, as if posed for a portrait, on the fallen tree with the midsummer green meadow all around her, and a flock of sheep in the middle distance. She turned and beckoned to the nursemaid, who picked up Matteo and gave him to his mother. When Sir James turned back to look at her, she was smiling down at her son. She looked up, and when she saw he was watching her, she kissed Matteo’s little head.

  * * *

  “And so, I told him,” Livia told Alys, seated on the bed as Alys brushed her black hair that night. “He took it very calmly.”

  “He will leave us alone now?”

  “I need his help to sell the antiquities; but he will never trouble you or Mia Suocera again. He may come to see me; but he will leave without seeing either of you.”

  Alys finished plaiting Livia’s hair and got into bed, ready to insist that Sir James was never to come to the warehouse, that was their agreement. Slowly, Livia loosened her gown and stepped out of it, pulled her dayshift over her head and laid them both in the chest. Naked, she stood before the bed, as the candlelight played on her olive skin, made shadows between her breasts, between her legs, as beautiful as a statue and as alluring as a nymph. She unfolded her nightshift and tossed it high in the air, so for a moment she stood, arms raised, her head up, then she caught her shift over her head and pulled it down.

  “You agree?”

  Alys, stunned by Livia’s shameless beauty, could not speak.

  Livia turned back the bedsheets and slid into Alys’s arms. She repeated the words she had said to Sir James. “It was very sad and surely very tragic. But we can be happy now. Sir James is forgiven and will not see your mother, you and your children are safe, and I”—she caught a little breath of anticipation—“I shall make my son’s fortune. Roberto’s son will be brought up as a gentleman.”

  Alys could not speak, could not even think with the image of the upflung nightgown and the upreaching curved brown body, feeling the warmth of the beautiful young woman slowly enfolding her.

  “You say nothing?” Livia whispered, her breath against Alys’s neck. “But I think we will all be happy.”

  JUNE 1670, HADLEY, NEW ENGLAND

  At dusk Ned shut up the hens in their little coop, a lean-to beside the house, led the cow and calf to their pen and closed the gate on them, brought the two sheep into their little enclosure beside the cows, and threw them a shared armful of hay. The river chuckled and lapped in the darkness and a great flock of wild pigeons flew over Ned’s head, going to their roost in the forest, thousands of them darkening the sky like a storm cloud.

  He tied his dog on a long rope in his kennel between the front door and the animals, to warn of foxes in the night, or any other predator—the settlers did not know for sure what animals hid in the forest and might threaten their stock. The dog gave a low growl and Ned felt the warm ruff of fur at his neck as his hackles went up.

  “What’s up, Red? Something out there?” Ned asked quietly.

  Quickly, he stepped into the house and lifted his gun down from the hooks over the front door, tapped a small measure of black powder into the pan so that it was ready to fire. Ned had been an infantryman for Oliver Cromwell in the New Model Army; they had all despised the old-fashioned musket, which needed the musketeer to blow a lit fuse into fiery redness and hold it to the pan for the gun to fire. Ned had bought a new flintlock that sparked its own fire and was ready in a moment. Now he swung open his front door, held his gun before him, pointed towards the silent darkness of the fields, his dog poised beside him, and said quietly: “Who’s there?”

  If it were a
ny of the People of the Dawnlands or any of the Indian nations, he knew they need not answer; they could be at the back of the house, coming silently up the riverbank as he peered, blind as a mole, out of the front door. They could be on the roof and only the dog would sense them. But Ned had traded with many men and women, talked with them, broken bread, shared salt, and trusted that nobody would come against him without warning. “Who’s there?” he repeated.

  The clatter of shoes on the track told him that it was white men. “Halt! Who goes there?” Ned shouted. “I’m armed.” He held the gun in his right hand and stretched his left hand to the dog’s stout leather collar, ready to let him off the chain.

  “Pax quaeritur bello,” came the whisper.

  Ned put up his gun and clipped the chain back on the dog. It was the motto of Oliver Cromwell: “Peace comes through war.”

  “Come forward,” he said. “I’m alone.”

  William Goffe and Edward Whalley stepped forwards out of the darkness and, without a word, Ned lowered the cock on the gun, pushed open his front door, and they all went inside.

  “No spies?” was all he asked. “No one see you pass?”

  The two men shook their heads.

  “Did you come up the common way?”

  “Round the long way: out east to the forest, and then back along the riverbank.”

  Ned opened the door and listened intently. He heard his dog settling down, turning round and round in his kennel and lying down, the call of hunting owls, and the noises of the forest at nighttime, familiar to him now after many nights alone. Beyond his door the voice of the river chattered softly in the darkness, there was no splash of an oar. Any white man following the two exiles around the margins of the town would have brushed against shrubs and low swinging branches, disturbed roosting birds, broken twigs, scattered stones on the path under heavy boots. Only an Indian could move in silence through the grasslands, brush, and swamp. Ned closed the door and the shutters so that there was no crack for any spy.

  “We won’t stay,” William said.

  “You can…”

  “No, we’re going to live off the land for the summer. We’re tired of battening on old comrades.”

  “It’s not battening,” Ned objected. “It’s what any of us would do for the other.”

  “Aye, I know,” William agreed. “But this season we can live off our own, in the open, like free men, not like hibernating mice.”

  “Where’ll you go?” Ned asked. “Stay near, and I can bring you some blankets and ale and the like. There’s a Norwottuck village just upriver, I know them—they’d shelter you.”

  “I wouldn’t feel safe among them,” Edward ruled. “We’re going south to the coast, near where we were before. Can you take us back there for the summer? And bring us back here for the winter?”

  “Aye,” Ned said. “I’ll have to get someone to mind the ferry.”

  “Won’t people ask where you’ve gone?” William queried.

  “Some of them’ll probably guess,” Ned said. “But if the ferry’s manned and I tell everyone I’m going hunting and gathering herbs for a few days, nobody’ll say anything. I’ll come with you for a day’s march, and I’ll hand you on to a native guide who can show you the rest of the way.”

  Edward and William exchanged a glance. “I haven’t come this far to be beheaded by a savage and have my scalp sent to England for the reward,” Edward said sourly.

  “Nay, you’ll be safe enough with a guide. They’ve got nothing against those of us that live modest and farm a few acres. It’s the others that have turned them sour: them that can’t be satisfied with a hundred acres, them that foul the rivers, them that run hogs through the cornfields. They who insult them, and get them into debt and then say the debt must be paid in land. But they won’t hurt two men traveling in peace.”

  Neither man looked wholly reassured. “But will they know there’s a reward on our heads?” Edward asked.

  “They know everything! But they’d think it dishonorable to betray a guest for money,” Ned assured him. “But you—in return—” He broke off, trying to find the words to explain. “When you meet them—you have to treat them like equals,” he said awkwardly. “Not like servants. They’re proud—proud as a cavalier lord in their own way—they have their own ideas as to how things should be, they have their own masters and ministers. They have their own God and their own prayers. And more than anything, they hate to be disrespected.”

  William clapped him on the back. “You’re a good man, Ned! You’ve a kind word for everyone, even savages. We’ll leave in the morning, yes?”

  Ned nodded. “As soon as I’ve got someone to man my ferry. You can sleep in my bed,” he offered. “It’ll be a while before you have a bed again. I’ll roll up before the fire.”

  Before he slept Ned took a sheet of rough paper and with his homemade quill pen and a little jar of ink made from crushed soot and an addled egg yolk, scratched a note for his sister, Alinor, and pinned it with one of his new shingle nails to his rough table, for anyone to find in case he did not come home from his hunting trip.

  IF YOU FIND THIS AND I, NED FERRYMAN, HAVE NOT RETURNED FROM THE FOREST PLEASE TO SEND IT TO MRS. ALINOR REEKIE / REEKIE WHARF / SAVOURY DOCK / SOUTHWARK VILLAGE / LONDON.

  SISTER ALINOR

  GOD BLESS YOU. I AM WRITING THIS IN CASE OF MISCHANCE BEFORE I GO INTO THE WOODS HUNTING WITH MY DOG. IF IT SHOULD GO AMISS FOR ME THEN SOMEONE WILL HAVE FOUND IT AND SENT IT TO YOU. THIS IS FAREWELL AND GOD BLESS YOU, SISTER.

  YOU SHOULD COLLECT MY GOODS. I HAVE SOME BEASTS THAT SHOULD BE SOLD AND THE VALUE SENT TO YOU. I WOULD THINK ABOUT £10. MY LAND AND CABIN WOULD BE WORTH ABOUT £40. YOU COULD ASK THE MINISTER AT HADLEY MR. JOHN RUSSELL TO FORWARD YOU THE VALUE. TELL HIM PELTS OR GOODS NOT WAMPUM.

  OR YOU COULD KEEP THE HOUSE AND FERRY AND JOHNNIE MIGHT DO WORSE THAN TO COME HERE HIMSELF IF HE’S NOT TOO GRAND TO KEEP A FERRY. IT’S NO HARDER THAN MAKING A LIVING ON FOULMIRE, AND SOMETIMES, WHEN THE MIST COMES OFF THE RIVER AND ALL THE BIRDS ARE FLYING LOW, I THINK IT IS VERY LIKE OUR OLD HOME. SOMETIMES THE RIVER COMES OVER ITS BANKS INTO THE SWAMP AND THE ONLY WAY THROUGH IS THE LITTLE PATHS THAT THE SAVAGES KNOW—THAT I AM LEARNING. I SEE FOULMIRE AGAIN EVERY DAWN HERE.

  I DON’T REGRET COMING HERE THOUGH I WAS DRIVEN BY YOUR SHAME AND THE DEFEAT OF MY CAUSE. I STILL THINK THAT HIS LORDSHIP WAS NOT FIT TO JUDGE YOU AND NO MAN IS FIT TO RULE ME. I LIKE THIS LAND WITHOUT KINGS OR RULERS BUT MEN WHO WALK QUIETLY IN HIDDEN WAYS.

  GOD BLESS YOU, SISTER—AND IF I DON’T RETURN KNOW THAT YOU WERE ALWAYS LOVED BY YOUR BROTHER—

  NED FERRYMAN

  JUNE 1670, LONDON

  Johnnie walked around to Sarah’s workshop in the early morning, breakfasting on a warm roll that he bought from a passing baker’s boy, so that he could see his sister before work started.

  “No Followers,” said the cook as he knocked on the kitchen door. “No gentlemen callers. And who comes courting at dawn?”

  “I’m Sarah’s brother,” Johnnie said humbly. “May I see her for a moment?”

  The cook swung open the door and the millinery assistants and senior girls, sitting at their breakfast at the big kitchen table, all turned around and stared at the handsome young man on the doorstep, and then, like a flock of startled pigeons in the corn, flew out of the room, abandoning their plates.

  “I didn’t mean to disturb…” Johnnie said, weakly.

  Only Sarah stayed and she came to the back door. “They’re man-mad,” she told him. “They’ll all be running off to pull out their curl papers and get properly dressed. If you stay long enough they’ll all be back.”

  “But it’s only me, why bother?” he asked as she came out and closed the kitchen door behind her. The two of them sat companionably on the stone doorstep, looking over the tidy yard, the delivery horse nodding over the half door, the groom filling a bucket at the pump.

  “Thruppence a day for a junior, tenpence a day for a senior,” she said. “The only hope for
any of us is that a man sees us and proposes marriage and takes us away from here. There’s no way to make a living out of feathers and glass and straw unless you own the shop.”

  “You don’t want to train for another trade?” he demanded anxiously. “You know Ma can’t afford new indentures.”

  “No,” she said. “Though I’d rather be in a real business and not women’s trade. For some reason they’re always paid cheap. But I won’t get stuck here, hoping for a man to rescue me. I’ll find a way to set up on my own, or I’ll find a patron and make headdresses and hats just for her. The court is full of women who want their own look. All the new actresses want to stand out. I don’t have to marry some fool to save me from this.” She thought for a moment. “If I could do exactly what I want, I’d go and buy the silks and lace where they’re made, off the loom. Think of that!”

  He was troubled. “But where’s that? Constantinople? India?”

  She shrugged. “Just a dream, a milliner’s dream. Anyway, why’re you here so early?”

  “I came to see if you’ve learned anything more about Sir James? His credit’s good, I asked Mr. Watson last night. Sir James is well known as a man of means, he’s an investor in the East India Company, you can’t do that without a fortune behind you, and his credit’s solid. Owns half of Yorkshire, and a good property in London, and he has money with the goldsmith’s too.”

  “Was he in exile with the king? Was he a royalist?”

  “Aye, he’ll have paid a huge fine to settle with the parliament commissioners so he could get his lands back. Then when the king came in, he’ll have got it all back again, rewarded for loyalty. He’s a wealthy man: clever enough to be on the right side at the right time. He was a royalist until the last minute, turned his collar, and then turned it again.”

  “So how does he know our ma?” she asked. “And what did he have to do with our grandma?”

  “He was Uncle Rob’s tutor,” he reminded her. “But that doesn’t explain why he’s so close to the widow. Walking out with her on a Saturday afternoon? They looked like they were courting when we met them on the quay.”